“Traditional healers are forbidden from handling Ebola cases,” Uganda's President Yoweri declared in an address to the nation on Wednesday evening, in the latest effort to curb the spread of the disease. Across much of Africa, the practice of traditional medicine passed down generations through family lineage or apprenticeship is widespread.
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During outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, they’ve proven to be a critical point of vulnerability. In May 2014, the first confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone was recorded. Investigations led to a traditional healer, described as "well-known and widely respected", in Kenema in Eastern Province. Patients from across the border in Guinea had sought her services. Soon, she became ill and died. Hundreds attended her funeral and burial ceremony.
The World Health Organization reported that local authorities later linked up to 365 Ebola deaths to that one burial. Later in 2018, during an outbreak of the disease in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, clinics that provided a mixture of herbal and pharmaceutical medicine, called ‘trade-moderne,’ were quickly identified as hotspots of infection.
They were staffed by healers who barely had a formal education, and who had no protective equipment. But they fill a glaring gap in medical care, where hospitals are few and far between. Rather than ban them, response teams trained and equipped the healers to safely identify and refer Ebola patients to specialized treatment centers.
Uganda’s health system is much more developed. There’s a sense of confidence among health officials that the current outbreak can be brought under control, as the country has during previous epidemics. But experts meeting at a regional ministerial conference this week have urged them to be extra vigilant as every outbreak faces different challenges. Uganda has reported 19 deaths from the current outbreak, including one in the capital Kampala.
